Philosophy – Page 31 – The Border of a Mind

a coffee parable.

June 6, 2021June 5, 2021 by Ajmal

It’s philosophy time. I read this interesting exemplum recently. It’s the example of a coffee as outlined below. If we extend it to a broader realm, experiences work the same way. They can either catalyse us towards growth and improvement. They can also wear us down. It’s about channeling them and trying to cultivate a balanced frame of mind. God bless friends.

..“It’s just like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too strong. What do you do? You integrate it with cream, you make it weak. But if you pour too much cream in it, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak. It used to wake you up, now it puts you to sleep.”
― Malcolm X

Memory Museums

March 7, 2021March 6, 2021 by Ajmal

This piece of art is inspired by a theme that I’ve always pondered on. The museum of our “minds”. Albeit it sounds poetic, each of us are museums of memories. The richness of thoughts in those museums doesn’t need dusting. Jan Mark puts it into paper quite brilliantly.

“Memory is your museum, your cabinet of curiosities, your ‘Wunderkammer.’ It will never be full; there is always room for something new and strange and marvelous. It will never need dusting. It will last as long as you do. You can’t let the public in to walk around it, but you can take out the exhibits and share them, share what you know. You will never be able to stop collecting.”
― Jan Mark, The Museum Book: A Guide to Strange and Wonderful Collections

intangible transience

September 20, 2020September 20, 2020 by Ajmal

Every aspect, object elucidates a story woven with transience. The flowers in the garden, the plants in the office, the wrinkles on your face, dried tree trunks, broken glass pans, aged furniture, sunset. Life is fragile and short. There’s no permanence, only a yearning within our minds for everlasting life.

“Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable, and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves, and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

Fragility | Transience

to the mountains

August 14, 2020August 14, 2020 by Ajmal

An old saying goes by the note that everyone would like to live on top of the mountain, but all the experience, joy, and growth would be acquired in the process of climbing the mountain.

“Which is more important?” asked Big Panda, “the journey or the destination?” “The company,” said Tiny Dragon.
Quoted from a cartoon that I saw online

fortitude

July 25, 2020July 25, 2020 by Ajmal

Impatience leads to resistance. Trust in divine timing.

“Patience is the calm acceptance that things can happen in a different order than the one you have in mind.”
― David G. Allen

An old decor theme I tried few years back.

Rainbow metaphor

July 22, 2020 by Ajmal

Everybody views rainbows differently. The person right next to you is seeing it from a set of water droplets that are different from the water droplets that are creating the rainbow you see. As a philosophical extension to this theme, people’s perspectives also work in the same way. Every soul is different and have disparate ways of contemplation and seeing things. Coexistence and empathy is needed more than ever.

“Rainbow Metaphor” – Illustration by *The Border of a Mind* Studios.

bird’s eye.

July 14, 2020July 12, 2020 by Ajmal

I always have this fantasy of flying high up in the air and having a bird’s eye view of places. I had numerous childhood dreams of just flying about in the sky freely like birds. As a natural extension of that, I’m an ardent appreciator and passionate admirer of aesthetic drone footages, be it video or aerial photographs. Philosophically also, I have this sort of unassertive frame of mind and view that if we always take a broader and eclectic view of any issue or hurdle or pleasure or any gifts of destiny, it allows us to keep ourselves grounded and calm and we can arrive at solutions much more easily. Broadness and narrowness are diametrically opposite poles in visuals and also really in life. (Remember “Mind Magnet” ? )

To experience what I’m relating to, disconnect from what you’re doing now, plug in headphones, and take a peek at this! Grateful for your glance and time. Keep reading!

From “Ambient”

pliable

June 28, 2020June 27, 2020 by Ajmal

“A man is born gentle and weak; at his death, he is hard and stiff. All things, including the grass and trees, are soft and pliable in life; dry and brittle in death. Stiffness is thus a companion of death; flexibility a companion of life. An army that cannot yield will be defeated. A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind. The hard and stiff will be broken; the soft and supple will prevail.”
Lao Tzu

Illustrations | Fine art

cross-purposes

April 24, 2020April 20, 2020 by Ajmal

“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.”

― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
A 2017 photograph from the streets of Tbilisi, Georgia.

vitreous worlds

April 21, 2020April 17, 2020 by Ajmal

It’s about having the eye to see the internal within the external. It’s to probe purpose and beauty in chaos and noise. It requires patience, intention, and humility.

“Intellect is the knowledge obtained by the experience of names and forms; wisdom is the knowledge which manifests only from the inner being; to acquire intellect one must delve into studies, but to obtain wisdom, nothing but the flow of divine mercy is needed; it is as natural as the instinct of swimming to the fish, or of flying to the bird. Intellect is the sight which enables one to see through the external world, but the light of wisdom enables one to see through the external into the internal world.”

–Inayat Khan